Chasing Rainbows
by EveryMomentMarked
Summary: This is a one shot: Edward leaves Bella in the woods. She doesn't cliff-jump. He doesn't go to Italy. She has time to come to some, sometimes surprising, understandings. "Out of the corner of my eye I think I see a flash of rainbow and tousled bronze hair


Out of the corner of my eye I think I see a flash of rainbow and tousled bronze hair. My startled heart stops. Gravity dissolves. Time becomes inconsequential. Even now, the mere suggestion of _him_ still has this phenomenal effect on me.

And it has been a _very_ long time.

I remember:

:the words.

_ You…don't…want me_

_ No._

:the woods.

Trees and cold air – getting colder – rushing past me. Rain. The smell of damp earth in my face. And the bracken moulding beneath my curled-up weight, gravity somehow pushing me into it even though I felt weightless.

:the sound of my breathing.

_ That_ was the one constant in the minutes, hours, days, months to follow.

_ Breathe, Bella._

I thought nobody would want me, if Edward cast me away. I thought he was justified. I convinced myself I was worthless.

I was wrong.

(A long time later, I wished I could take that girl by the shoulders and shake that ..._shame_… out of her.)

I might have gone forever only breathing, but for an awkward boy and his huge russet wolf.

Oh, God, Jacob.

(Memories of tears sting at my parched eyes.)

Uncovered by Edward's absence, by that gaping hole torn into me, there was Jacob. There was warmth: the sodas, the cramped garage, his breath, his skin. There was Jacob, igniting me. There was Jacob and the growing flames- almost managing to eclipse that chasm…

But fire is fickle, destroying what it illuminates.

Although I owed Jacob my _life_, I came to realise that I couldn't repay him in the way he desperately ached for. Admitting this, I was devastated down to my bones: I was not burning for Jacob.

I discovered you didn't need to be a vampire to unleash a monster: you just had to believe you needed to be one.

I didn't expect forgiveness. I didn't _want_ forgiveness for that. Actually, I think I might have hoped to be punished.

I remember:

:the utter disbelief.

_ Bells?_

So much wrapped up in that single, tiny endearment. The past. Our present.

_ Jake…_

And our unravelling future.

:the tremors.

Their violence shook the air out of my lungs. I thought I wouldn't even be able to breathe anymore.

:the last sound of that hollow night.

A wolf's heart _breaking_ while his absent eyes mirrored the moon.

I lingered there, my numb eyes searching out for him long after he vanished. That time, though, there was no search party sent after me; because _that_ time I was standing.

In the space of that infinitesimal moment when a breath changes from coming in to going out, between it being there and being lost, I was freed from something I could only recognise once it was gone. In the moments after, the weightlessness felt _right_.

And when I started living again - I _was_ fire.

In looking back I'm thankful that Edward didn't return, although I raged against him for exactly that; hissing and spitting and clawing at the arrogant ice effigies in my mind.

I know now, I needed solitude for that. And time.

Fires don't burn forever. When mine had extinguished I sifted through the remains and caught a glimpse of something throwing rainbows into the air. There, I found it: something that knocked the world out from under my quivering legs.

It wasn't entirely true that Edward had abandoned me that day. He had also abandoned something _to _me. I stared in wonder at the glittering gift cradled in my trembling hands:

Edward's dazzling heart - unbeating and full of undying love.

And it had been waiting, enduring the burning, both mine and his, it had been _with me_ all this time. Oh, Edward.

Edward left me, like _that_, because he hadn't understood the intense truth of the love in my mortal heart. I _let_ him leave because I hadn't wholly trusted in him, or myself. And Jacob……had underestimated us both.

We were all of us fools and we each paid dearly for it. I looked down to see a gleaming crescent moon in the palm of my hand. Unlike immortals, my scars were permanent and visible teachers.

At long last I understood.

I am finally ready for him to return.

Suddenly, I'm anxious for Edward to come home to me. I _need_ him home with me.

So I follow that rainbow and hope he is at the end.


End file.
